Ghosts of the Tsunami

About this book

A renowned journalist for London's The Times and the author of People Who Eat Darkness, Richard Lloyd Parry delivers the definitive account of the disastrous earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan in 2011, and the stories of the survivors. Named One of the Best Books of the Year by The Guardian, NPR, GQ, The Economist, Bookforum, and LitHub On March 11, 2011, a powerful earthquake sent a 120-foot-high tsunami smashing into the coast of northeast Japan. By the time the sea retreated, more than eighteen thousand people had been crushed, burned to death, or drowned. It was Japan's greatest single loss of life since the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. It set off a national crisis and the meltdown of Fukushima's nuclearpower plant. And even after the immediate emergency had abated, the trauma of the disaster continued to express itself in bizarre and mysterious ways. Parry, an award-winning foreign correspondent, lived through the earthquake in Tokyo and spent six years reporting from the disaster zone. There he encountered stories of ghosts and hauntings, and met a priest who exorcised the spirits of the dead. And he found himself drawn back again and again to a village that had suffered the greatest loss of all, a community tormented by unbearable mysteries of its own. Ghosts of the Tsunami is an intimate and timeless account of an epic tragedy, told through the stories of those who lived through it. It tells of how a nation faced a catastrophe, and its struggle to find consolation in the ruins.